Eduardo Jesus, 79, still has difficulty describing accurately the odor that has felt at home in recent months. “It’s a tremendous nauseating smell that looks like rotten olive.”
For 50 years living in Fontela, in Vila Verde, Figueira da Foz, does not understand how it was possible to have authorized the construction, a few hundred meters from home, a factory that transforms used food oils and fatty acids into biofuel.
“A dude was in peace and now we are here supporting this smell,” he laments.
Extending clothes is another challenge.
“It’s very difficult because then you’ll get it and has a weird smell because that smell kneads in the clothes,” he says.
“Sometimes I forget, I leave the window window open and when I will close it, there is already the smell inside,” adds the woman, Maria de Lourdes Jesus.
As Complaints started in summerwhen the company – Bioadvance, The Next Generation, LDA – was linked to the power grid.
“When she started working, we started to feel that something was not well,” Vila Verde’s president of Vitor German tells SIC. Only then did the population realize exactly what kind of factory had been installed in the neighborhood.
“When she started to appear, everyone said she would be very good for the area,” he remembers Sic Celeste Miguéis, a Fontela resident.
It was announced as “one of the largest factories of advanced biofuels in Europe” and AICEP (Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade of Portugal) attributed to him the project of potential national interest – A statute that, although not dismissing the company of complying with all the steps of licensing, ensures that the project is regularly accompanied and simultaneously by all entities responsibly.
Figueira da Foz Porto concessed the space at the Liquid Granis Terminal and, on the website, announced the investment as the realization of a “strategic objective”. Already the City Council, by proposal signed by the President, Pedro Santana Lopes, reduced the rates to halfasked the entrepreneur to be the municipality to announce the investment and made known that he was following the implementation of the project.
“The role of the chamber is very important (…) often to motivate and guarantee licensing in a timely manner,” said Santana Lopes, president of the municipality, in an interview in July 2022 when asked about the role of the House when bioadvance to the county.
To support the investment, which initially estimated to be 11 million euros, The company also received community funds of the pandemic response project worth 3.65 million euros.
The construction of the factory began in 2023 without the company having digital installation titlethe document attesting to the licensing rules. That is, defends the CCDR-Centro, The company could never have been built. Even today there is no such document, which has not prevented it from working.
“What is certain is that we who work here in Porto daily, day and night, feel that the factory works because the corrupation of cistern trucks, to come and go, and the smells that it releases, especially at night, do not mislead anyone,” says Paulo Mariano, vice president of the Figueira da Foz port community.
The owner of Bioadvance told the authorities that the company only is testing – A figure that does not exist in the law.
“It is the most modern company worldwide. There can be no smells in that company. We are in the phase of tuning and testing. When you go to the mechanic with your car, when it doesn’t smoke well, you have to tune, ”said the businessman, Paulo Gaspar, at an extraordinary municipal assembly in October last year, which had the subject in the order of work.
The population does not believe.
“The tests were so well done that even a ship came to carry 2 400 tons of product,” says the president of the Board, Vitor Alemão.
“We can’t believe that a ship comes to look for 2 400 tons of testing product.”
The mayor refers to the “Sir John Fisher” ship from Leixões, which docked at the Figueira da Foz Porto Granis Terminal, where Bioadvance is located on February 1 and departed four days later for Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
“Now I think, if the tests are this, when it is really working, what will it be?” Says Celeste Migueis.
Public consultation open when a company was already built
On November 19, 2024, the Portuguese Environment Agency opened the public consultation to the Bioadvance project at Figueira da Foz Porto. Only at that time, The company was already built and operating. The consultation did not even end: it was interrupted on December 11 last year, 5 days ahead of schedule, because, because it was “identified that the installation is covered by the serious accident prevention regime, the process was rejected.”
Chamber passed construction license
Bioadvance is installed in the port of Figueira da Foz, an area that has special jurisdiction. The Figueira City Council understood that it had to approve the architectural project and pass construction license.
The documents of the municipality to which the SIC investigation had access indicate that the approval of the architectural project was communicated to the company “April 28, 2023”, when Google Earth’s satellite images suggest that the construction of the factory had already started. The “final granting of the order” only happened 9 months later, “December 20, 2023”.
The construction license also jumps that the municipality of Figueira da Foz passed only on April 29, 2024. He says, black in white, that There are “conditioning of the works”. One of them, the “presentation of the proof of issuance of the digital title of industrial installation”. That is, when the construction license was issued, The work was not only practically completed, but one of the conditions of the license would be violated.
The Figueira da Foz City Council, which considered that the Bioadvance factory had “municipal interest”, rejected to interview.
Company history generates concern
Bioadvance has another advanced fuel production unit from used food oils and fatty acids on the guide in Pombal. This factory – the first in the group – “was working since at least 2017 and until May 2023 without environmental license”, according to CCDR -Centro.
“The issue of bad smells is constant, especially in summer,” he tells SIC Sandra Ferreira of the Guide Residents and Friends Association. “It’s an extremely sick smell of rancid oil,” he adds.
In 2022, when the businessman wanted to expand this unit, the Pombal Chamber participated in the public consultation. He accused Bioadvance of having “an unlawful and improper discharge history (…) especially after rain, weekends or at night.”
A Bioadvance says this information “does not correspond to the truth”. In response to SIC clarifies that “the company made the decision in 2020 to cancel the binding of wastewater to the municipal collector, having informed the respective municipality that, since then, has been kept inoperative, treating wastewater in authorized operators.”
The images to which the SIC investigation had access, give body to an anonymous complaint delivered to this public consultation. It speaks of “retention basins routes, full of oils, acids and fats to be released to the ground”. It also says that the “samples” of the waters that the company sent for analysis were “adulterated”. Something Bioadvance says to be false.
The Pombal Chamber also tells an episode in which a “valve rupture in one of the company’s tanks” made biodiesel “overlooked to the guide’s WWTP with disastrous consequences.”
With this history into account, the inhabitants of Vila Verde, in Figueira da Foz, do not understand how it was built a second unit of the company company in the middle of the Mondego River.
“We have no guarantees that the entrepreneur in question makes discharges directly in the river in the ebb. Every day there are tides of Vazante, ”says Paulo Mariano, vice president of the Figueira da Foz port community.
Both the current and the previous administration of the Figueira da Foz port rejected to interview SIC.
Licensing in question
A Bioadvance tried the licensing four timeswhich has been successively refused. The businessman accuses the Portuguese Environment Agency and the CCDR Center to fail the deadlines and to be incompetent. The owner, Paulo Gaspar, even wrote to former Prime Minister António Costa and the President of the Republic to ask “to put both responsible [da APA e da CCDR-C] in the eye of the street for its incompetences and attempts to delay the licensing of the industrial unit. ”
To sic the APA says that the rejection is the sole responsibility of the entrepreneur and which was due to “incorrect and incorrect filling of the simulator” that precedes industrial licensing. “This information is false, we have always provided the correct information on the information we submit,” said Paulo Gaspar, owner of Bioadvance, in a written response he sent to SIC.
In the process it is described that when asked about the stored dangerous materials, The company said it. However, “they use methanol, sulfuric acid, sulfur dioxide, etc.”, lists Guiomar Silva, resident of Vila Verde.
Bioadvance insists that the fault of the failure of licensing is from the Portuguese Environment Agency and CCDR-C. “The construction was started after the submission of the licensing process, and whose deadlines were not met by the entities,” explains Paulo Gaspar. It says that, because of the delays of these entities, “the issuance of the digital installation title should have occurred in October 2024 for tacit granting,” he adds. The entrepreneur leaves a warning: “The company will go through the own means to require the issuance of the respective title”.
The irregularities that SIC began to investigate at the end of last year have now been confirmed. ASAE – who never responded to our request for information – supervised the factory, confirmed that he was working without license and fined it.
AICEP confirmed to SIC that, on January 20, after the inspection of ASAE, decided to “immediately suspend follow -up PIN [Projeto de Potencial Interesse Nacional] This project.
CCDR-Center also took a more muscular position. The owner summoned the “immediately ceasing the activity” under penalty of “incurring a crime of disobedience”, punished with arrest up to 1 year.
To Sic, The businessman says that “he will fulfill all that is legally imposed on him”.
